Now That's Radical!

    Is it really a radical objective to take seriously Jesus’ Great Commission? It probably shouldn’t be, but for too many Christians, it is. Too many Christians have little desire to see the family of God grow. Some are even critical of growth in the church. Sadly, they want to keep the church all to themselves. But Jesus made it clear, and the example we have in the Book of Acts is that God wants His church to grow. He wants more churches, and he wants all of them to grow. I think we can say categorically that it is God’s will for The Bridge to grow! That’s our radical objective: to see explosive growth at The Bridge this next year, a doubling of our family.
    We introduced this renewed focus on evangelism and growing God’s family at The Bridge on March 11. That day, many of you committed to radical prayer over the following 30 days, to see the Lord do just that. The stories I have gotten back from you have been inspiring. One man told me that as he began to seriously pray for his coworkers to be saved, those he never dreamed would respond to the Gospel began asking him questions about his faith, seemingly out of the blue. Another young man said that since he began to pray earnestly for people to know Christ, that he has had freedom to share his faith like never before. A number of you have indicated this has been the most spiritually invigorating time in your life. We’ve already had guests in our services these last two weeks from people who were invited because they were inspired to on March 11. Making a radical commitment to prayer works! If you have not joined us in this, you still can!
    But we also talked about two other vital ingredients necessary for this radical objective to be reached: radical inviting and radical sacrificing. Next week, we’ll talk about making radical sacrifices (I’m sure you are looking forward to that – haha), but let me talk about radical inviting.
    On Sunday we gave every person in our church two special invitation cards for Easter weekend (including Good Friday). We also announced that next week we are sending out 100,000 invitations for Easter weekend through direct mail. We are taking Jesus seriously and are going “into the highways and hedges to compel people to come in”. But direct mail isn’t enough. And while we are praying that you will follow through with inviting those two people we prayed for last week (I am praying for you by name), inviting just two people isn’t exactly “radical”, is it?
    We still have a couple thousand invitations at church ready to be taken by you to everyone you know. I’ve given them to the drive-through lady at McDonald's and the cashier at Walgreen's. I’m going to my neighbors and keeping a dozen or so in my pocket and car to give to everyone I see. Will you do that with me? I know, that’s radical, but that’s the point. Just think what would happen if all 800 or so of us (the number who attend The Bridge at least monthly) would give out a dozen invitations each and ask that many people to come and check us out on Easter Sunday. We would not have room for them all. But again, that’s the point! What do you think Jesus will think of that? To have our auditorium overflowing with curious seekers learning about the significance of His resurrection. Wow! I get goose bumps thinking about it!
    So let’s do it. Let's get radical in our inviting. Let's invite EVERYONE we know.